


found peace in your violence

by ag_sasami



Series: WIP Amnesty [5]
Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Alluka and Nanika are the best sister(s), Apologies, First Time, Frottage, Getting Together, Hair-pulling, Literal Sleeping Together, M/M, Making Out, Mutual Pining, Reconciliation, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-14
Updated: 2020-01-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:53:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22250614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ag_sasami/pseuds/ag_sasami
Summary: For years Gon worked to commit that expression to memory; toiled under the tortuously slow process of unpacking it; until he knew the shape of the look when it fell weighty between his shoulder blades. The dip of his throat. The side of his face when Killua imagined himself subtle.Hungry.He wears that face more often than not of late, and it strikes Gon that Killua must be starving after all these years.
Relationships: Gon Freecs/Killua Zoldyck
Series: WIP Amnesty [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1597828
Comments: 15
Kudos: 284
Collections: The Best of The Best





	found peace in your violence

**Author's Note:**

> Since Gon and Killua are basically MIA from the current story, canon compliant until it's not.

He's 12, 13, and it's Killua beside him at each step, chasing his heels, leading the way. If he can count on nothing else in the world, Gon can count on Killua. Until he's 14 and red-eyed with rage—he doesn't know how Kurapika maintained the composure to constantly live at the edge of this feeling. Until he pushes Killua away with single-minded fury and vengeance crowding out the space in his heart for any sort of love. That he waited for the dying girl took nothing short of a miracle, took the sliver of warmth left in him that would otherwise belong to Killua, shoved him out into the cold and demanded he stay there.

Killua hasn't been with him and he doesn't notice until Pitou is hanging off his fist like a glove and Killua's voice is raw with the desperate fear, misery torn across his face like a wound. It's like waking up, a breath of air in the blistering suffocation of smoke. _Where have you been?_ filtering through his empty rage, bewildered at how he missed Killua's absence until this moment.

He loses an arm. Killua holds him, hangs on tight and refuses to let him go, screaming his name as Gon puts a stop to _everything._

Then there is nothing.

And nothing.

And nothing.

And then—

He wakes to Morel, Knuckles and Palm and Ikalgo, Killua nowhere to be found. Surely Gon dreamed him between bouts of consciousness. Because Killua only cries like he doesn't believe in his own pain, silent and unintentional, averted and wiped away in wet wrists and sleeves so that Gon can never actually seen it. Never so wide-eyed and unguarded, except the last time. Killua never makes such openly broken sounds. Except the last time. Last time, with Killua's pupils narrowed to pinpoint terror and the echo of his hysterical sobs following Gon screaming into the black of coma.

In the midst of the relief all around him, the disbelieving smiles and salt-tracked faces, his stomach churns with shame. Adding to the disorienting combination of emotions, he can't feel his _nen_ and he can't use _gyo_. It makes him want desperately for Killua's steady presence and a hand to hold.

\-----

He's 14 and they are standing at the gate to the World Tree, Killua's hand wrapped around Alluka's, the grin upon his face as forced as Gon's. Killua wants to follow him, wants to sink his fingers into the bark of that magnificent tree and race Gon to the top. Gon can see it in his face, hear it in his voice. Except they'd cleared the air between them, and after, he'd leaned into Gon's side, nudged their knees together and said, "I finally figured out what I want to do. For now." They mean every exchanged word, that they'll always be friends and they'll keep in touch; but those are just ill-fitting bandages, words to make their feet move in opposite directions. Gon feels the loss in his bones before they even turn from one another. His heart feels the way he remembers Killua's ruined hands at the mercy of his _jajanken_ , swollen and blistered and aching with each steady beat.

It's worse than the yelling that came first, mostly Gon's fault that Killua had broken pieces of himself to throw. Worse than Killua's bitter laugh and the cold water shock of guilt, straining to hear it when he rasped out, "I know you didn't mean what you said." Watching him wringing his pale hands together, knuckles somehow whiter still, and staring at the space between his feet. "I followed you to hell and dragged you back out," sleeve dragged across his face, "but you left me behind and didn't realize you should apologize for it."

Worse than Killua wet-eyed and looking at him sidelong, cutting Gon off mid protest to yell at him—unbridled hurt and miserable fury, "Two years, and you didn't hesitate to push me away. You're my best friend, Gon." Worse than the defeated slump of his shoulders and the way he choked on soft misery. "I thought I was yours too."

It feels like someone blew his arm off at the elbow.

\-----

He's 15 and his _nen_ has yet to return.

\-----

He's 15 and too much time, space, lies between them already. The world is marvelous and he wouldn't trade the experience, but he would rather Killua laugh beside him than just on the phone over impossible miles. He can hear Alluka's voice in the background, and Gon misses her too. A day or so in each other's company was all it took to love her. They—Alluka, Nanika—were such warm light in that brevity. And Gon thinks that Killua standing beside his sister was the most complete version of him Gon has known.

"The Killua you know only exists because _you_ also stood beside him." Palm had replied as she stole a spoonful of their shared parfait. "Didn't you know you're his world, Gon?"

\-----

Their reconciliation plays on a loop in his head for months. The fight, not the fledgling forgiveness that followed.

Killua had called him selfish before, more times than he could count. It never really meant anything, if he's honest, because Killua never refused him in the end. But this. The battle with Pitou, leaving Killua behind only to have to race to Gon's rescue after all, and to nearly arrive too late at that. Suddenly every selfish thing he'd ever done carried weight. This final cruel choice—and it was a choice, regardless of how much rage he was drunk on—made every little hurtful decision that came before it a clear string of betrayals that Killua weathered for him.

It wasn't fair of him, but Gon might not have left him behind if things had been different before they launched the attack. (Unless Killua calls him out, Gon will never admit that out loud.) In the moment, he was so blind with vengeful bloodlust that nothing remained to keep his pettiness under control. He had lashed out, retaliation for the way Killua had been hiding things from him. If not for the mission, if not for his overwhelming need for violent retribution, it would have passed or he might have pushed until Killua confessed. Instead, he used it as part of a sorry excuse to go it alone.

He thinks back to Killua fumbling his way through his own self-conscious feelings, how hard he tried to put himself into words under Gon's demands. And Gon _had_ demanded—albeit weakly because in context his complaint paled in comparison—because he was carrying fresh hurts of his own.

"You lied to me, Killua!" he'd said, then softer, "You've _been_ lying to me."

"I didn't—"

"I'm an idiot, but I'm not dumb. When I was with Palm," he went back, back, back to where he felt it begin, "you weren't training."

"No." Killua looked him in the eye when he admitted it, met him in the midst of all the shrapnel between where they were then and where they were before. He did not offer anything more in the way of a reply.

"This is what I mean!"

"Huh?

"You don't _tell_ me anything. Hiding things is the same as lying."

"It's not the same thing."

"It is!"

"I just don't see the point in saying things that should be obvious. It's embarrassing."

"How is it obvious?!" Gon fanned his arms out wide, disbelief in his tone. "The only thing that was obvious was that you were keeping a secret from me." He let his hands slap back against his thighs. "I _know_ you, but I'm not smart enough to read your mind."

"It didn't concern you," Killua spat, defensive with sharp teeth aimed for vital places. He clicked his mouth shut audibly as soon as he'd said it.

Gon breathed in and out. Once, slowly, willed down the sting of well-placed claws. It was a short but weighty silence until he offered, "That's petty, Killua," in soft admonishment.

"Hypocrite," Killua had bitten out as he turned his back to Gon. He scrubbed at his head with both hands and growled in frustration. Gon had not expected him to apologize, and he didn't. Instead, while awkwardly rocking on his heels, he forced out, "An ant almost killed me, and I didn't want to have to explain why." He said it unreasonably fast, words pushed together too closely, crowding out from behind his teeth in a tangled rush to escape.

"What?"

"Forget it."

"No!"

Killua turned his face to him, tone and expression pleading. " _Gon_ , don't ask me for this."

"You can handle torture," Gon's tone was unkind. Killua's dignity be damned, it was Gon's turn for the simmering hurt to boil. "So I know you can figure out how to handle telling me the truth." Later he apologized again for the monumental damage he had done that night, over and over; but he had wanted them to start again without this ugliness hiding in him still. 

Killua had clenched his fists so hard he drew blood. Slow fat drops oozed down his knuckles. "I don't—" his voice caught. "I don't know where to start."

"We were only gone half the day! How much is there to tell?"

Killua had sighed, and brought his hand up to inspect the damage. Gon strained to hear him when he finally started speaking again. "I was going to leave. After your _nen_ came back at the end of the month." He fidgeted, slipped his bloody palms into his pockets, pulled one back out—Gon remembered thinking it was so he could chew on his thumbnail.

"Bisky told me that if I couldn't beat Shoot that I had to walk away from you. She said—" he had cut himself off and taken a deep breath, a shaky exhale. "She said that if I couldn't bring myself to fight someone I wasn't sure I could beat, that one day I was going to leave you to die. And I had to move on from you before that could happen."

"You wouldn't do—"

"She was right, Gon." His voice was rough when he cut Gon off, like he couldn't bear to say it out loud. "I think it was supposed to motivate me, but I failed. I failed and she was right and I would run away eventually and leave you behind in a fight you couldn't win alone."

"Killua..." Gon couldn't breathe, felt the shake of panic that crawled up his spine. He had been speaking in past tense, but Gon had felt the immediacy of Killua's words as an itch under his skin.

"So I promised myself I was going to protect you while your _nen_ was sealed, but when you got it back I would say goodbye."

"What does this have to do with the ant?" He hadn't recognized the sound of his own voice, the rough thing scratched out of his throat. Killua had turned around slowly to look at him. He crossed his arms tightly across his chest. A full flush heated his salt-streaked face, became splotchy the further down his throat it crept. He looked down when his eyes met Gon's.

"I followed you on your date using _zetsu_."

"Why did—" Killua continued right over the top of him and did not allow Gon to ask that question.

"When you were at the tree giving Palm flowers, I sensed an ant. I went to take it out, or at least draw it away so you wouldn't notice it and it couldn't find you. It was that ugly rabbit looking one who discovered _nen_ and I couldn't beat him. I _knew_ I couldn't beat him, but I _couldn't_ let him get to you either." He ran a hand over his face and left it there as he continued. "Except Illumi was in my head again, telling me to run, that I couldn't win and I needed to escape. I thought I was going to die. But if I couldn't beat that thing, I was going to lose you one way or the other."

Something worse than sadness and shame weighted Killua's voice. Lost. He lost himself in the shake of Killua's shoulders, the water that dripped between his fingers and the wet pink streak that slid down from his palms, the curve of his forearms, to the sharp point of his elbows. Gon didn't know whether it had been for his behavior or that he had said it all out loud, that he had done so in tears he clearly hadn't wanted. He hiccuped and wiped his face with his sleeve again, and Gon suddenly needed to do the same, swiping away his own tears with the heel of his hand.

"Illumi put a nen needle in my brain." Gon sucked in a short breath, eyes snapping to focus on Killua's bowed head. "Probably during the Hunter exam. Every time I tried to fight with losing odds, I couldn't because he was in my head telling me to run away. I couldn't beat Shoot because of it, and we were both going to die if I couldn't kill the ant either." Killua looked up at him, eyebrows furrowed and tears still creeping uninvited from the corner of his eyes.

"So I dug it out of my head."

Gon moved without considering his actions and wrapped his arms around Killua's shoulders, squeezed him tight and sniffed. At the contact Killua tensed, dropped his hands to his sides, but he hadn't pulled away. Gon's collar grew damp, sopping up his tears without his hands free to stop them falling. Finally, _finally_ , Killua brought his arms up to twist his fingers into the back of Gon's shirt, slouched to let his head drop, the bridge of his nose braced against the bone of Gon's shoulder. He either intended to whisper, or his voice had quit on him. Either way, Gon had almost missed it when Killua murmured, "I didn't want to leave you," nearly into his shoulder.

In the end, he left anyway.

\-----

They're nearly 16 and he can't bear to be away any longer. He ignores their well-tread habits when he disembarks from the airship, throws his arms around KIllua and tucks his face into into the firm curve of his neck and shoulder. And Killua doesn't resist in the least, lets his sharp surprise sag against Gon as he wraps arms around his back and holds on just as tightly.

Killua sighs, says, "Took you long enough."

"The world's not the same without you." Gon's been telling him so since they left each other in the shadow of a colossus.

Killua chokes a little over his, "Why do you still say such embarrassing things?" It's rhetorical. They both know it.

Gon laughs at that, warm and bright, and pulls back to hold Killua at arm's length a moment. He's looking back at Gon with a soft, thoughtful expression usually reserved for when he thinks Gon isn't looking. _Why did I let this go for so long?_ Gon thinks, doesn't have an answer for himself, and Alluka interrupts his thoughts before he can form one.

"Gon!" She charges into him, still just a kid who wants to be held.

"Hello Alluka," he replies, letting go of Killua and opening his arms to move his hug to her. She's almost as tall as Gon already. When she eases up her hold on his waist, he says, "And Nanika?"

"She says hello. Hold my hand?" she asks. With a smile says, "Oniichan can wait his turn."

"I'd be happy to," Gon replies easily, holding out his hand to her. Alluka's smile is the sun. It's the light Killua's smile reflects, manic brightness but with fewer demons haunting its edges. Maybe what Killua's would have looked like if someone had rescued _him_ from his childhood.

He doesn't have to look up to know Killua is watching him; doesn't have to look because his own face is burning and Killua is shouting about Alluka minding her own business and how he doesn't need his hand held. So of course he's looking. It's only now that Gon recognizes it for what it is, but Killua's been wearing that look since they were 12 and high on the fresh thrum of friendship, on worthy blood loss. It feels like he already lived a lifetime under that _particular_ gaze—all sharp and hollow, a visceral aching thing. He remembers the early times it crept up on them—on the heels of Killua's righteous indignation for Gon's safety, following a hot flash of pride across his face—but Gon can't recall a time since then he didn't feel the gravity of Killua's eyes on him, if one ever existed at all.

\-----

Trying to find a way to get his _nen_ back becomes a team effort. Ever unreliable, Ging never elaborated on the cost he would have to pay to recover it. Everyone else they think might know is either dead or off continent. Once again, Killua is following Gon's mission, and every day Gon hopes it never comes down to a fight that leaves Killua protecting him and Alluka on his own. He quiets his conscience by reminding himself that Killua chose this in parallel to his own purpose, not at its expense.

Friendship works better on even footing, a fact Gon wishes he learned sooner. He says as much out loud, which stops Killua mid-step. Very seriously he turns to Gon and says, "I think we were always going to have to fuck it up to figure that out." _We_ sounds like _you_ in Gon's ears.

\-----

They're 16 and sitting at the edge of the world, feet dangling over a cliff overlooking the sea, a seamless mirror with the galaxy filling every corner of the darkness. Alluka is curled up a short distance away by their fire—head pillowed on their bags, back to them. Her ribs rise and fall with the heavy rhythm of sleep. Killua is laying beside Gon, arms tucked behind his head and taking in the sky above them. Even so, from where he sits Gon notices Killua's eyes shift to him at regular intervals, and he feels like a distraction.

This one immutable focus, Gon learned sometime ago, is Killua's default; that expression he slips back to when not otherwise engaged.

Not expectant.

And not for anyone but Gon.

For years Gon worked to commit that expression to memory; toiled under the tortuously slow process of unpacking it; until he knew the shape of the look when it fell weighty between his shoulder blades. The dip of his throat. The side of his face when Killua imagined himself subtle. It lacks the soft curves of Killua's fondness; the clever set of his brow that serves in both rage and scheming; by a large margin it misses the way joy crinkles the corners of his eyes. The flat apathy of the expression on his mouth is made a liar by the furrow in his brow, an inscrutable motion of his face stuttering to a stop between unhappy things. Some part of it reminds Gon of fear. The shade of it traces his veins, a helpless ghost he feels every time he sees Killua's wide-eyed panic.

_Hungry._

He wears that face more often than not of late, and it strikes Gon that Killua must be starving after all these years.

Gon falls back with an 'oomph' to look at the sky from Killua's angle. He maneuvers himself just enough that Killua has to unhook his hand from under his head to accommodate Gon's crowding, letting Gon re-appropriate his arm as a pillow. Killua scrutinizes him in the darkness, gaze heavy and palpable.

His eyes are wide and gray and reflecting stars when Gon turns to meet his stare. In the starlight, Killua's skin glows and it leaves Gon thinking idly that the moon is a poor imitation of him. _That's dangerously romantic,_ he chides himself. But he still can't chase the thought away. Sooty lashes graze Killua's cheeks as he closes his eyes—the only part of him not pale and silver and intangible in this light. "If you want to go far," Gon murmurs, acutely aware of how close their faces are.

"Go together," Killua replies in a whisper Gon feels against his skin.

\-----

They're 16 and Killua's hands are weapons disarmed against Gon's; knives in the sheaves of his fingers carefully brushed against Gon's hand, thumb down his wrist. Beneath them, the crumbling bricks are rough where they perch on the roof of some nameless village inn they stumbled into to accommodate Alluka's still limited stamina. Stone digs in under his nails where Gon has been clenching his fingers over the edge, and he tries very hard to relax them when Killua touches him. There is zero chance Gon can look at him right now, can feel Killua's eyes electric and burning him and he can't look. If he looks... If he takes in the heated stare, Gon thinks he might crack; might let slip the thing he left casually unattended beneath the immediacy of their living.

The ferocity of it terrifies him.

Standing on the dam with Kite and watching the birds fill the sky noisy in the sunrise, it brushed past him. _Killua should be here with me to see this._ The urgency of that wish a foreign buzz of fervor beneath his skin. He tried to swallow it down, drown it out of an excited fear. Overwhelmed. A bone-creaking maw of sharp unexamined feelings stalking from beneath him, because he felt in himself the reflection of Killua's look of searching _want_. He could never again un-see it. Gon held down the flutter in his heartbeat with a deep breath and willed it away, frantic to send it sinking to the bottom of the dark waters where it was hiding.

But the damn thing could swim, and it was born for those waters. And swim it did, circling the ever-filing well in him that whispered _Killua_ in ripples and waves.

He spent more than half of his life with a fishing rod in his hands and it would take _nothing_ to fish it out, to wrap his hands around its slick scales and hold it until it became something less slippery. Easy. So it's not that he didn't want it then, or at least he didn't _not_ want it. He still feels under prepared for this particular hunt, needs more time in practice to catch the creature. Although, if Gon gives it any manner of real thought, the certainty overwhelms him, the understanding that he only imagines the risk. That only makes him more anxious, so he doesn't allow himself to think about it much.

And so it swims, and the waters rise.

Killua—ever attentive and keenly aware—sighs softly, leans over to rest his temple against Gon's bare shoulder. Anymore, the act is a relatively bold move for him without a clear excuse. Stray hairs brush soft across Gon's skin as they take refuge under the fabric of his sleeveless shirt. This space is a privilege, an act of bravery marked by the heat radiating off Killua's face and the clutch of his other fingers in the hem of his shorts. He promised to stop lying to Gon, no more leaving out details and offering half truths. (Gon promised never to leave him behind again.) Gon does his level best not to disrupt this particular honesty. He lets Killua offer the hesitant sweep of his thumb across Gon's knuckles, fingers consciously relaxed beneath them. The contact isn't demanding—not idle either—and doesn't seem to require an acknowledgement or a truth in return. He does not _push_. Nor does he _expect_ , judging by the slight jolt through his posture when Gon spreads his fingers to accommodate Killua's between them.

This is a full truth.

It's hard to breathe. He still isn't ready, but Killua has always made him brave.

"Do you remember when we made it to the 200th floor at Heaven's Arena and I got busted up by spinning tops in that very first fight?" Gon keeps finding ways to apologize. He says it without intending to, because the memory bubbled up unbidden to the surface. It's just easy enough to dip his feet into the water, but still barbed enough that he can offer it back to Killua as _something_. He knows this one won't be remotely enough. It's all he has right now.

"I was so angry with you," Killua acknowledges into the knee pulled up under his chin. Fitted between Gon's, his fingers still their nervous twitching, their hands a collection of parallel lines of bones and scarred skin.

"That was obvious when you dug your heel into my broken arm." This, lost in a huffed laugh built of nostalgia and anxiously sweating palms. Killua's matching laugh comes out a shade softer and with something dark laced through it. "I think it's the first time you were _actually_ mad at me."

He breathes in, out with measured intention before replying evenly. "I think it was the _first_ time you treated your life so carelessly." The hissing way Killua hung on the word "first" isn't lost on him. It isn't passive aggressive; Killua doesn't actively hang onto the specific mistakes they've made over the years. Gon is aware that he's also trying not to hang onto the shape of the rest of them. It's just another sort of truth. Gon does turn to meet his gaze this time, when Killua lifts his head. Tension snakes visible through Killua's muscles. His voice is gravel tumbled against itself when he adds, "You were all that I had."

It sounds to Gon like, _I was empty without you._ The only person Gon knows better than himself is Killua, and still this insight is relatively new. Gon has spent the better part of their years together—and the ones alone—puzzling Killua apart like a bird in flight. Piece by piece by move until he could put words to him: desperately lonely, devoted, hopeful, hungry. Sometimes he worries Killua still feels empty _with_ him; that in fact it is him, in all of his enthusiastic carelessness that continues to leave Killua with a void in him. Gon sees it sometimes in the hollow way he stares into the middle distance.

It wouldn't be the first time he's hurt Killua, but it might be the only time he'd have noticed without being told first. "You know I wasn't going anywhere," he offers with sheepish warmth. Killua _tsks_ at that, turns his face and lets his hair fall over his eyes. Their fingers remain interlocked.

"We were kids," he murmurs. His breathing is unsteady. "From the seats I only knew you weren't moving."

It cuts through Gon as a fine-edged blade he knows Killua did not intend as a weapon. That was one of those moments, in retrospect, that he took from Killua instead of giving. _That_ was the sort of unintended damage Gon works now to avoid inflicting. Killua gives of himself so easily, like breathing, and Gon knows he once suffocated him with how little of that generosity he returned.

"I should have thought about how it might hurt you too. I'm sorry, Killua." A quiet, insufficient offering, but Killua relaxes back against him anyway.

Killua's ribs expand with the night air when he accepts it with, "I know."

\-----

Sleep brings a softness to Killua's face that he rarely wears while awake, alert. Even as age sharpened the curves of his face into angles and planes, sleep rounds their edges. Mouth slack, brows arched slightly and free of any of the tension he carries. When he's honest with himself, it's the heavy lids and that one long intake of breath as he's waking up that's Gon's favorite version of Killua.

That first night they went home to Whale Island—his home, Killua's by association and invitation—Gon crept into the bedroom in the witching hours, time burned away to hear all the Ging stories Mito had to tell. He expected to find Killua waiting up, maybe in the light sleep of the vigilant. Instead, Gon found him comfortably starfished in his bed, the pile of spare bedding still on the floor obviously abandoned. He nudged Killua over to no avail, and had clambered in between him and the wall; woke in the bright light of mid-morning, Killua turned into him warm and close and soft with Gon's head still pinning down his arm.

Even now, he rarely sleeps so deeply, and Gon never bothered to ask if it was exhaustion or security that let him sink so far under. 

They'd slept apart only when they had to since then. A month of adjusting to a shared pattern of sleep in the close space of Gon's small bed made it difficult in any other arrangement. Warm bodies, heavy limbs, and Killua resolutely insists he only did it for Gon's benefit. Insistent despite the way he clings in his sleep, before then even—sometimes, if the day proves difficult enough—with an arm slung over Gon's waist; forehead pressed against the back of his neck or nose buried in his hair, depending on the particular demons in Killua's head. He sleeps better too with Killua's reliable heartbeat at his back, in his wrist beneath Gon's fingers. Just sleep, he's told himself, the creature comfort of another trustworthy body. He doesn't know when he started explicitly marking that distinction in his own head.

Alluka changes things, necessitates new sleeping arrangements—three beds shoved together with no space left between them; Gon alone while Killua and Alluka share a second bed if they can't move the furniture; Killua and Gon alternating nights between the bed with Alluka, the couch, the floor when there's only one—Gon refuses to let Killua give up the comfortable space every time, and Alluka never seems willing to sleep alone. At some forgotten point along the way, Killua stopped sleeping so lightly when threats weren't dogging their heels, a luxury of relative safety and Gon watching his back. Still, Gon sees the restlessness he's redeveloped, even from the other side of the room. He feels the fitful attempts to sleep, and he _knows_ Killua slept better in his old state of shallow awareness.

It's Nanika that notices, or maybe just Nanika that comes out to ask, "Killua, can I have my own bed?" There are two beds this time, Gon already curled up under blankets in one. Watching. Surprised by Nanika requesting something _for_ herself instead of _from_ someone else.

"Oh. Yeah, okay," Killua concedes cautiously. "But why?"

"Because I love you."

Surprise splits Killua's face open at that, soft and vulnerable with such fierce affection Gon's breath stops up in his throat. He tucks her into his side with an arm around her shoulders, kisses the top of her head and says softly into her hair, "You're a good sister, Nanika."

"And Alluka."

"And Alluka," he agrees.

Killua slides in with him later, curls up warm beside him and wiggles his toes to burrow into the warm space beneath Gon's calves. It's not enough to fully wake him from the sleep he'd chased, but it stirs him enough to feel it when Killua seeks out his hand in the near dark, entwines their fingers and brings their hands to his heart. In the morning, Gon wakes to Killua with mouth ajar, snoring softly under his chin, an arm snaked under Gon's and hanging limply across his back. Killua's hair is soft, fine, catching with static when Gon runs his fingers through it, light across his scalp until Killua hums and sighs beneath his lingering sleep. It takes immense willpower to extract himself from the tangle of Killua's leaden limbs, away from the breath gusting warm against his throat.

He's drowning, trying desperately to wrap his hands around the swimming creature fear and hang on for his life. It's so much stronger than he expected.

When he tears himself away and stumbles out of the untidy sheets, Gon finds Alluka sitting at the table sipping tea and reading a book, knees tucked up and toes hanging over the edge of her chair. She smiles at him, sweet and bright and clever. The space Killua carved out for them in the world has treated both of them well. Gon puts his hand gently on the top of her head and murmurs, "Thank you both."

She shakes her head and looks up at him. "Oniichan needs you," quietly adds, "And I love you too." Gon doesn't ask whether she means that _she_ loves them both or that she agrees with Killua. Either way, he supposes the rising waters and deep creature don't require clearer details than that.

"I guess we're lucky to have you looking out for us then."

"Yes," she agrees emphatically with a nod of her head, "you are."

\-----

They're 17 and the well floods. It was only a matter of time.

\-----

They go home to Whale Island for a while. Gon misses Mito and the briny breeze, and Killua knows him _so_ well. It was a surprise, Killua grinning, averting his eyes and stretching his arms behind his head, when he announced they had a boat to catch. Happiness is the warm bloom of Killua's face in the sunshine, telling Alluka about the jungle and the sea, and smiling at Gon with such bald affection it makes Gon's mind wipe blank temporarily.

Later, he stumbles into a conversation not intended for his ears.

"Why are we _really_ going to Whale Island, Nii-chan."

"I miss the way Gon looks sitting in trees that know him." This is a statement meant to be murmured soft and secret, but his voice carries above the sound of the cresting waves. His smile is self-conscious and uncomplicated, spots of color high on his cheeks made brighter under the midday sun. Gon wants to climb out of his skin with the heat and nerves firing beneath it.

"You've turned into the kind of embarrassing person you complain about!" Alluka's laugh is a clear bell ringing in the wind. The breeze lifts the hair that's fallen out of her haphazard bun, and she squeezes Killua's ribs in the circle of her arms.

Killua rests his elbow on her shoulder, hand on the crown of her head and Gon's mind is awash. Nothing but _Killua_ in a litany, _Killua_ bubbling up in him, and _Killua_ spilling over his jackrabbit heartbeat. And there. _That_ was the moment he reached out and wrapped his fingers around the tail of the swimming beast, treading the floodwaters and pulling it in close to his chest.

_I can't come back from this._

\-----

Mito adores Alluka. She'll love Nanika too, but she stays quiet beneath Alluka's awareness. After dinner—the sun still high in the sky as it works its way down its arc to the horizon—Gon and Killua leave her in Mito's care and set out to explore the ways the island has changed in the years since they were last here together.

It's a race between the tangled roots of ancient trees, tripping across sodden rocks in streams, hopping between branches and ferns and vines. Salt sea air, the warm earthiness of the wild places far from the beach, and Killua keeping pace with him altogether overwhelm Gon's senses with _home_. Except, Killua is a cheater, body alight with crackling energy. Gon is blindsided by the tackle that takes them rolling down a hill in a tangle of laughter like they're 12 all over again for the first time.

When they finally land, Gon is sprawled over Killua, face pressed into his neck. He stills into the salt and sugar and ozone scent of Killa's skin. If not for one of Killua's hand flat and warm against the middle of his back, Gon would think he's probably been laying there too long just breathing him in. He slowly pushes himself up to a crouch over Killua, knees and hands astride his body. His face must say something, because Killua reaches up hesitantly to touch him, to run his thumb carefully across Gon's lower lip, nail grazing the other. His eyes are glassy, hooded as Gon's lips part involuntarily.

"Gon?" His name is a quiet question, tight in a tone matched to the nervous expression that arranges itself on Killua's face. There's a fear under it that Gon knows well, understands it as a slippery thing.

Instead of replying, unsure of what he would say anyway, Gon bends his elbows until he can graze Killua's mouth with his own. It is barely enough contact to call a kiss. Eyes open, Gon sees Killua's surprised blink—two, rapid—before his expression settles into something determined and he slides his hand to the back of Gon's neck. His eyes close before Gon is close enough again to go cross-eyed looking at him. Graceless, the only way to describe the way they kiss in the grass under the sun: poorly timed and anxious, too many teeth with too much momentum. They are not terribly good at it. Gon would be embarrassed by that, but Killua's hands are firm against his ribs and he tastes like chocolate; and all he can think about is the way Killua's breath is getting shorter as his kisses become more insistent.

Hungry.

Gon feels Killua wrap hands around his wrists where he has them curled over Killua's jaw, fingers grazing the hair behind his ears. With some unanticipated, uncoordinated momentum Gon finds himself on his back pinned beneath Killua's weight. It isn't the first time he's had Killua on top of him, but it is the first time like _this_ , with Killua's knee between his and pressing Gon's wrists into the grass beside his shoulders, teeth scraping experimentally against his lips, Gon's body bearing most of his weight. It's sloppy, uncoordinated, neither of them sure what to do with their hands, mouths. He thinks that might be why Killua is holding him down, taking away a variable so they can figure out how to move together. _Master strategist_ , Gon thinks. Later.

It's a controlled burn, fire held in check just beneath skin. He's grateful for Killua's restraint. Gon feels out of control and too unsteady to actually face any more of his own wanting; too unsteady to do anything else.

Gon turns his head just enough to catch his breath, cheek pressed into Killua's. And Killua lets go of one of his wrists to put his hand in Gon's hair, just fingers slipped into it and resting against his scalp. They lay there in the sun as their breaths come slower, steadier, until Killua levers himself up off of Gon to sit back on his knees. He blushes at the suggestion of anything embarrassing, but this flavor is a novelty. An appealing flush paints his face, his neck, and Gon abruptly finds himself overwhelmed with an itch to trace it with his fingers. He doesn't. Not yet, because Killua is rubbing the back of his neck and averting his eyes, and Gon is only partially sure he knows how to navigate this embarrassment of Killua's.

Gon bends up his knees so his feet are astride Killua's legs where he tucked them, weight braced on his forearms so he can look up at him. "Killua," he starts and doesn't finish.

"I. Um." Killua audibly swallows down whatever else he was trying to say. Settles on, "That was unexpected."

"Mmm." Noncommittal. Gon watches him for another moment and then sighs, smiling, dropping back into the grass and spreading his arms out wide. With eyes closed, he can only hear Killua shuffling around—staying in the space between Gon's knees. When he finally stills, Gon cracks an eye open to check on him. What he finds is Killua resting his elbow on a knee, his head atop that, worrying his fingers in the grass beside the other leg tucked in at an angle in front of him. A study in Killua's anxiety.

"You're thinking too loud." Gon closes his eye again, against the brightness of the sun, because there's nothing new to see. If Killua were looking at him, he'd be wearing a furrowed brow and a mouth down-turned at the corners, eyes distant. Gon hates that look. Despite the lies his brother poisoned him with, Killua was made for joy. Alive in the sound of his warm laugh and unburdened posture, not in the darkness and violence sewn into him by someone else, and not in this nervous brooding.

"It's a lot of work thinking for both of us," he retorts. It's reflexive, and it startles a laugh out of Gon.

"Relax," he says with a smile he knows Killua can hear. "Enjoy the sun with me. Overthink later." It's all he's going to say about it. This seems like the flavor of embarrassed Gon knows not to push, the kind that requires space for Killua to come to grips with himself. He's warm and pleased and sleepy in the early evening sun, and he's going to let himself sink into the nap he feels coming; Killua will either join him or he'll wake Gon up when he has food on the brain. Regardless, both ways work for Gon.

Killua does join him, eventually. Being in and out of consciousness at the edge of dreaming, Gon's not sure how long it took him. It doesn't matter. Killua's head is pillowed on his stomach, one arm tucked over his own stomach and the other thrown out wide and open like Gon's. He grasps at awareness long enough to rake his fingers through Killua's hair a few times, brushing his bangs back from his forehead and leaving his hand to rest in that position. The last thing he remembers through his sleep haze is Killua's fingers trailed light against his forearm, stilling with the weight of his palm on Gon's skin.

\-----

He's 17 and Killua's hands are greedy, hot and fumbling against his bare skin in the black of near-dawn. Gon wants him noisy, wants to drag out every enticing sound Killua can make.

One.

Gon traces into the shell of Killua's ear with his tongue, aided by the weight of his warm breath. It drags a growl out of him, low and throaty, encouraging, and it ignites the fire in Gon's spine.

Two.

Killua's mouth searing along the line of collarbone goes straight to the heat coiled up Gon's stomach. He doesn't mean to hiss, to grip his fists so tight in Killua's hair, but there are teeth in that kiss—sharp and bruising at once, and Gon doesn't hate it. Killua gasps, tilts his head back with the pull of Gon's fingers, and breathes shallow and short until Gon realizes what he's doing, loosens his grip, Killua sighs, but doesn't ask Gon to stop, to move, or let him rest.

Three.

Gon threads his fingers into Killua's hair again, more carefully this time, and pulls a little, experimentally. When he yanks a bit harder than intended, that's what gets him the reward of Killua's undignified keening, a high and reedy thing, a little desperate.

\-----

They've been on Whale Island for weeks, getting itchy with the need to find a new adventure that isn't exploring the edges of this new thing they're nurturing between them. Gon startles awake to thunder as the storm he smelled on the wind earlier finally breaks land. Startles hard enough, apparently, that it pulls Killua to full alertness.

"Gon?"

"Thunder woke me up," he yawns. "Everything's fine." Another peel of thunder, and lightning is flashing blue outside. The bed shifts and Killua pads silently to the window to pull open the shutters, rain pounding the windows in the scant moonlight oozing through the clouds. Gon stretches out his limbs into the space Killua left behind. The next crack of lightning illuminates Killua, sharp white and blue, lit up like Godspeed and Gon murmurs, "You're so pretty."

"Hmm?"

"Nothing. Enjoying the view."

Killua huffs at him, stalks back to the bed and invades Gon's space under the covers. Fits his knees between Gon's, fists his hands loosely in the front of Gon's tank top, presses their foreheads together on the pillow they're sharing again. "This is a good view too, I guess." It's mumbled, tinged with a shade of Killua's embarrassment over words.

Gon relishes touching Killua in the daylight, chasing the pinking of his skin with his mouth, lazy and without intention, or focused and purposeful. For all that "purpose" is just escalating things to the loss of some nonessential clothing. Killua's fair skin has warmed to a dusty golden glow from the island sun, and freckles are beginning to darken in a spray across his shoulders and the back of his neck. All it takes is generosity with words, telling Killua what he thinks about the way the island has transformed his skin, the ways Killua makes him happy; then it's Killua sputtering, trying to move the conversation along.

He's getting better with verbal intimacy. Still, the darkness lets him relax into his most honest self. In the dark, Killua can hide the embarrassment that comes with trying to be gentle, can say what he actually wants to without clamming up in nervous muttering. This is no different than anything else though: Killua acts quickly once he makes a choice. Gon lets him. Lets Killua press their lips together; lets him lever open Gon's mouth with his tongue until Gon melts into him in the darkness.

Tonight it's Gon that wants the escalation, Gon who drags Killua closer to him—like he could climb under Killua's skin—traces Killua's jaw with his mouth because he likes the way it makes him shudder. Tongue pressed hard at his pulse, below his ear, the hollow of his throat. Breath in his ear because he thinks it might encourage Killua to make that growling sound again, the one that he felt in his spine the last time.

It does. Gon takes note.

Hands up the back of his shirt and roaming, grasping, nails longer than Gon's and not particularly gentle on his skin. Killua pulls one arm from under the shirt to fit his hand against Gon's jaw and angle his head back so he can mouth at the skin of his neck. The other he slides forward, thumb brushing Gon's ribs just shy of his stomach. And Gon arches into it, away from it, he's not sure where he moves because it tickles and he isn't sure whether he wants Killua to stop. He feels the smile curl over Killua's mouth, the subsequent slowing of the motion until it's feather light and unbearable. It makes Gon's breath go funny, almost a laugh but tangled in a shallow gasped thing from his own mouth that he doesn't recognize. Whatever it is, however it sounds, Killua makes an appreciative noise in response.

"You're enjoying my pain too much," Gon gripes, no heat behind it, making no effort to stop Killua.

"You seem pretty comfortable to me." His tone is innocence wrapped in something predatory. Gon isn't sure how it works, but Killua manages to play dumb while sounding like he wants to devour Gon. He shudders, gooseflesh breaking across his skin. "Very comfortable," Killua amends.

Gon worms a hand between them, slips it under Killua's shirt, spreads his fingers wide against the planes of his stomach. He continues to be both a little impressed and envious of the clean lines of Killua's body, the lithe muscle so different than the relative bulk of his own. Even his body is predatory.

"What does that even mean?" Killua asks against his mouth, shivering when Gon drags his fingertips over the bare skin above his navel. He didn't realize he'd said it out loud.

"I don't know? You're very distracting." At this, Killua narrows his eyes, scheming, a clear blue in the occasional flash of light from the sky above the sea.

"Oh. Well, I could stop," he offers, all feigned sincerity.

"Nope," Gon says. And Killua chuckles into the shell of Gon's ear. He groans a little, and repeats himself with another adamant, if breathless, "Nope."

Killua kisses him again, the urgency, insistence between them growing. Another bright flash of lightning and near simultaneous thunder loud enough to rattle the window. Killua makes a sound low in his throat. Gon feels the rumble of it on his lips when Killua redoubles his effort, and he wants to live in that noise. Instead, he pushes at Killua's shoulder and climbs over the top of him, one leg on either side of his thigh and bodies pressed as close together as Gon's weight will take them. Gon goes easily, lets Killua tug him into another kiss, re-intensifying until Killua pulls one of his hands out from under Gon's shirt to tug at its hem.

"Help me with this?" Gon enthusiastically complies with that request, tangling a bit getting it off in his attempts to keep kissing, as much body contact as possible. Killua doesn't fare much better. He has to prop himself up to get it over his head, progress impeded by Gon's hands, teeth scraped ineffectively at the skin beneath his ear. In the process, he elbows Gon sharply in the ribs. It doesn't matter, Gon is laughing and Killua's skin is hot against his, hands mapping out the landscape of Gon's chest, stomach, mouth fixed below Gon's collarbone.

And that, earns Killua a shoulder to the nose.

"I'm sorry—" both in unison. Gon laughs at this, Killua offering his own abrupt bark to the sound.

"Don't apologize," Killua says firmly, and Gon doesn't quite know what to say.

He settles on, "okay." Brings his fingertips down to poke gingerly at what are certainly teeth marks in his skin. Killua winces.

"You don't get to apologize either," Gon insists. He doesn't get a reply other than Killua's fingers replacing his own, pressing on the spot experimentally with his thumb. Gon hisses at that too. "Too much." He's still not sure if it's too much in a good way or not. It's just too much. Killua nods in the darkness, kisses him softly as a peal of thunder rolls long and low outside. He laughs when Gon puts a hand on the back of his neck and pulls him in harder to run his tongue along the roof of Killua's mouth, rewarded with Killua's hands clenched against the skin of his chest.

The intensity ratchets up faster, farther than it has. And there comes a point they can't ignore the building want, have to address it when Killua rolls them back on their sides to drags Gon's knee up over his thigh to close as much distance between them as possible. Can't ignore it when Gon arches his hips into the motion and awkwardly scoots his heel across KIllua's back, until it's going to be painful if he tries to get any closer; can't ignore the reflexive jerk of Killua's hips, hard against Gon. Killua breaks away, arching his neck back and breathing harshly, fingers digging hard into Gon's hips.

"Killua," he says and it sounds like a question. His tongue turns traitorous, heavy in his mouth and stalling his next thought on its way to being spoken. Something like _too many clothes_ or _I want to touch you_.

"Gon," he echoes, not quite a statement. "I don't want—"

"We don't have to—" Gon interrupts.

"No shut up. I don't want to _stop_ ," he pants. "Unless you do." Gon takes a steadying breath before pressing his hips into Killua's with slow intent, circling his tongue at the hinge of Killua's exposed jaw in response. "Shit, okay," Killua says in a voice strained and reedy. Says "okay" again like he's settling on the decision.

"I don't know what to do," Gon admits weakly between kisses, but he tentatively trails the pads of his fingers down to Killua's waistband.

"Me either," Killua mumbles, but he slides his hand up the outside of Gon's thigh that's still thrown over his. Gon shivers beneath the soft scrape of his nails, and Killua hums; slips his fingers under the fabric of Gon's shorts, lets them creep higher, higher, nails dragging over the sharp jut of his hip. Gon's breath hitches and he isn't sure if the groan was his or Killua's as Gon traced a finger down the length of him, vaguely fascinated.

Then it's Killua's mouth on his and tongue behind his teeth, not enough space for Gon's hand between them. His teeth in Killua's lip, hands moved to trace the corded muscle of his back, losing track of Killua's mouth wet on his throat when he ruts against Gon. Moving together, back pushed into the mattress with Killua crawling between his legs, snaking his arms under his shoulder blades and burying his face in Gon's neck. He bends his knees up, braces them to get some leverage to meet the grind of Killua's hips against him, and it feels too good, breaks an undignified sound out of him much louder than he intended.

He can feel the curve of Killua's grin against the crook of his neck, and Gon takes up the only weapon he's found, uses Killua's hair to guide him back to kissing him. Nails dug into the skin of his shoulder blades, Killua's mouth slack and breath harsh, eyes squeezed shut. "Gon, please."

Gon asks, "Stop?" Shake of the head, shallow breath, so Gon tightens his grip. "This?" he said quietly. And it breaks a whimper out of Killua, makes his body frantic, hips erratic and Gon wants more of it, rutting together in the dark.

"Yes," Killua hissed, Gon's mouth on his neck, his jaw, salt on his tongue and breathing hard. Killua moves and it sends a shock of fire through him, and he just wants to feel all of Killua's bare skin against his, settles for a hand putting pressure on Killua's lower back. His grip slackens on Killua's hair and he uses the opportunity to pull an arm out from under Gon to brace himself up, elbow beside Gon's ribs. It changes the way their bodies fit together, and Gon's vision is going spotty at the edges. He pulls Killua back down to kiss him.

"Killua, keep—" his request is broken by his own moan against Killua's mouth. Breathy and unsteady and he hears himself mumbling Killua's name before the world goes momentarily blank. It's a wave crashing, heat rushing through his blood, tearing through him. And Killua's mouth is sealed over his, tongue in his mouth, keeping Gon's voice hushed with his lips.

Ragged breaths pull him away from Gon's mouth, moving to put his forehead on Gon's chest, hands around Gon's wrists. Killua is still hard and the drag of him against Gon's oversensitive _everything_ has him in a full-body spasm, Killua's hair unintentionally yanked in his grip. And then it's Killua's teeth in his skin, voice a whine high in his throat, body abruptly stilled against Gon.

Gon massages his fingers into Killua's scalp where he'd been gripping, and Killua lays down on Gon with his full weight and a sigh.

\-----

Mito walks them to the dock, hugs Alluka, Killua, Gon. "Come home sooner next time," she insists, watery. "There's no need to be gone so long." Gon doesn't tell her that the world is too big to come back this far. It's true but he wouldn't mean it if he said so out loud. 

"I'll make them visit," Alluka says brightly. "I like it here." Killua's eyes are soft and fond. For the first time, Gon doesn't stop the impulse when it overtakes him: threads his fingers between Killua's and clasps his hand. His palm is warm. They make their way up the gangplank, wave at Mito over the bow. 

"We'll come home," Killua calls down to her as the crew unties the ship, raises anchor. Mito's smile lights up her entire face and Gon knows the same expression is on his own. 

_Home_. 

With a grin he turns to Gon and asks, "Where to now?" 

"I'll follow you anywhere." 

**Author's Note:**

> I started this story _literal_ years ago and I finally gave myself permission to just be finished instead of fighting through another 2k words of description around dialogue. It's been a labor of love and I'm glad to finally post it. 
> 
> [ _Silence_ ](https://youtu.be/yD1McOmvkEI)


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